This is the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Welcome to Praise the
Lord Europe. I’m Charlotte Jones, and I’m joined today by James
and Tina Stacey. James is the author of the book, “Schizophrenia
Defeated!” and he spent 26 years living in a mental prison,
until 17 years ago when God miraculously delivered and healed
him.

Charlotte: Welcome and thank you very much for joining us
today. James, would you just like to share a little bit about
how schizophrenia first impacted your life and how it showed
itself to you?

James: Certainly. Well, the illness actually dawned on my
life in 1964. May I just say that I was a born again Christian
at the age of 14, and at the age of 20, I went to a Methodist
Bible College where I began to take God very seriously. When I
came out of the college, I stayed at home in preparation for the
Methodist ministry. I spent a lot of time in prayer, and it was
in 1964 that I had a real baptism of the Holy Spirit, which
followed one night when I visited a lady from our church. We
prayed normally and the Holy Ghost came down in a most
remarkable way. That was a joyous and also a disturbing
experience, but actually what that encounter did for me was to
stir something in the soul life. It was a matter of months later
that a huge cloud of darkness came over my mind and my life when
I had returned to my former job as a newspaper reporter. I just
not could handle this satanic darkness, this blanket over my
life, and at that time I was admitted to what was called the
normal old Victorian Sanatorium. I was taken in there for
several weeks, and that was the start of a 26 long year bondage,
which actually finally ended in 1990 when the Lord Jesus both
delivered and healed me in a matter of minutes.

Charlotte: James, can you just expand a little bit for
us. You say that schizophrenia is demonic. Can you just expand a
little bit for our viewers who don’t really understand the
spiritual elements of schizophrenia? Can you explain your
opinions on that?

James: Certainly. Well, I believe these are convictions.
A conviction is not an opinion. It is much much stronger, and
when we begin to talk about the demonic side of schizophrenia, I
always refer to the voices which schizophrenics hear. I ask the
question, to whom do these voices belong? They are not the voice
of self. They are most certainly not the voice of the Holy
Spirit, but they are voices from invading spirit forces that
impose themselves on a person’s life, and they actually overrule
them. If I were to quote, say from Mark Chapter 5, we see that
in the life of Legion, this paranoid schizophrenic I would have
called him, who was dominated by these voices who more or less
just took over his life. And so I can just say that it is a
conviction of mine that I have because I had these voices trying
to actually destroy my life many, many times.

Charlotte: When you speak about these voices, were they
always negative voices?

James: Indeed. These voices in my own life would often
try to induce me to end my life;
voices of suicide, and I had to contest them of course.

It was only through the power of prayer and knowing the strength
of the Holy Spirit that I was able to actually ward them off and
finally come to the point of defeating them.

Charlotte: In your book, you talk about the fact that you
believe the spirit of rejection is quite fundamental in
schizophrenia. Can you just explain a little bit more about that
for us?

James: Well of course when the illness of schizophrenia
was with me, I had a little idea about this. Once I had become
free in 1990, I began to understand a lot about the spirit of
rejection. May I say that my mother was someone who lost her
father when she was only two. Her mother remarried a man from
outside the village later on with children of his own. When my
mum’s mum finally died, she herself was more or less sent to
someone in the village to be looked after. The stepfather would
not take care of my mum and my auntie alongside his own
children. So there was no one in our family who would take care
of them both, so my auntie and my mum were separated. Auntie got
the better of the bargain because she went to live with an aunt
and uncle who had lost their only child, and for them she became
a lovely replacement. But my mum got the worst of the bargain,
so to speak, because she went to live with grandma, who at 51
had had seven children, and by this time she was wanting life a
little bit easier. So my mum grew up with rejection in her own
life right into teenage years and early adulthood. This actually
was compounded in the sense that she had given birth to my two
brothers, and she very much wanted me to be a girl. Now this is
a natural desire of course, but when it becomes something very
strong in a mother, it can actually feed down to the baby while
the baby is in the womb. And I feel that rejection came down to
me while I was being carried by my mother.

Charlotte: When you say that you felt that your mother
wanted you to be a girl, was that something she spoke over you
when you were born?

James: Well, we knew as a young boy, she had always
wanted a girl. In the time that she actually was in later life
in an old people’s home, she actually used to say that she had
her girl that she wanted. Of course, she was a little bit senile
at that time, but we kind of got to know that mummy wanted me to
be a girl. It was only actually after I had become free,
delivered and healed, I then went for counseling to a Methodist
minister. He had this kind of knowledge that although I had been
set free, I needed to “go back” into the womb, and I needed to
pray to be born; to choose life. So that was a beautiful time,
and it really expanded the freedom which I had come into. That’s
how rejection hit my life, but sad to say, my mother was feeling
rejected all her long life. Of course, I do honor my mother and
my father. I thank them for their lives and what they did for
me, but in reality it was that rejection which actually caused a
blitz on my mum’s life that was passed down to me, and that’s
how I feel it is so strong a conviction, that rejection is a
root cause of it.

Charlotte: Would you say that was something you then
carried through into your childhood, at the early age of
adolescence, and into later parts of life?

James: Well, schizophrenia is a mystifying illness. Of
course, it dawns in late teens or early adulthood, and the
medical field can’t really say what is the root cause of
schizophrenia. There are many arguments which put it down to
this or to that, but I feel that as I look back over my life,
that there were traces of rejection in my childhood and in my
early teens. But there was one wonderful thing that actually
came into my life, which was through knowing Jesus Christ as a
boy of 14.

Charlotte: How did that come about?

James: Well, I went to a Youth for Christ meeting one
night in the cinema, and I heard Billy Graham preaching. Along
with the rest of the audience, I was invited to come forward to
receive Jesus as Savior, and I sat in my seat and thought I
don’t really need to go forward. I can accept Jesus anytime
anywhere; that was my reasoning. Until at one particular moment,
the convicting power of the Holy Ghost just came over me and I
found myself in the isle sobbing my heart out going to the front
to have an encounter with Jesus. So that actually put some
confidence in my life, and though there were certain teachers at
school that weren’t very winsome to me in that sense they were
kind of on the rejection level in pinpointing my lukewarmness or
my inability to get Algebra right or whatever. I knew in my
heart of hearts that God loved me, and despite that rejection, I
knew that I was special to Him, and He had become special to me.

Charlotte: Great…great. You talked a little bit about the
fact that you went to Bible College. Was that something that was
a natural progression from school? You actually worked as a
journalist for a little while. Can you just expand a little bit
on that?

James: Yes, that’s right. Well, there was a friend in my
school who actually went on to the local South Yorkshire Times,
the local newspaper. My first few jobs after school were working
in the steel works, in a very confined hut where I was typing
invoices for the lorries; and it was a lovely summer, red-hot
outside and I thought to myself…there must be a better job than
this. So I pursued an interview in the local newspaper, and I
was taken on at the age of 16. I did my indentures. I had no
kind of plans for a career in journalism, but around about the
age of 19 and 20, I began to take the Lord Jesus Christ more
seriously. I saw three young men on television one night from
this Bible College. They were talking about Jesus in a more
intimate way than I knew Him, and I thought I would like to go
there. My Methodist minister said, “Would you like to go?” I
said, “Indeed.” So in a matter of weeks, the whole application
was filled in, I had given my notice at the newspaper just at
the right time, but they wanted to promote me; I then began this
year at the college.

Charlotte: And it was the Bible College where the first
kind of signs of schizophrenia really showed themselves?

James: Well you know, I really believe that because there
was something being disturbed in my soul life. The schizophrenia
demon, the rejection was in my soul life. And I would just point
out here that when a person comes to Christ, as we know, they
are as the Bible says a new creature. But we must be entirely
honest about this. Not everything is dealt with when a person
comes to know Jesus Christ. Of course the spirit is renewed; a
person is forgiven. Their sins are washed away and Jesus becomes
real and receives the Holy Spirit, but there may be some things
in a person’s life, as it was true in my own life, where
everything had not been dealt with. And this rejection, I feel,
was beginning to surface during the time I was at college, as I
began to take God seriously.

Charlotte: Is there a defining moment, is there a kind of
memory that you know of – an event that happened that kind of is
significant in your memory as to when this illness started?

James: Yes, I can remember. I was in the village of
Conisbrough near Doncaster. I was doing my local calls, and I
was just walking around the village. On this particular
afternoon, this cloud of darkness just engulfed my life; I did
not know what to do. Pleading the blood of Jesus was not
something that I could do actually or knew about that I ought to
have done. This huge black cloud just engulfed me. I could not
even type a simple paragraph about a jumble sale that was being
held. I came back to the office that night, and my whole body
became, as it were, locked up in a strait-jacket. It wasn’t long
before I was rushed off to the psychiatric hospital in
Sheffield, and that was the first of many, many visits.

Charlotte: Was that tied in with an overwhelming
workload, something basically like that?

James: Not really. I loved my job and the people of the
newspaper would trust me to actually do my job well, but there
was something which was niggling at me. I could not shake off
this bondage. I didn’t know, for example, how to speak in
tongues, which later on God gave me that gift and it was
powerful when this nest of spirits actually used to trouble me.
Because not only did I have the spirit of schizophrenia, but I
had to contend with another major one, which was a religious
spirit, and also suicide as well; so there was a nest of spirits
who were working together actually to destroy me.

Charlotte: Well, we’ll certainly discuss that in a lot
more detail…. James, you spent 26 years battling with
schizophrenia. Can you share with us how you actually got
through that time?

James: Well, that’s more than a third of a lifetime of
course. It was a very, very difficult struggle – a spiritual
struggle. And I just want to say that at the start of this
actual illness, I did meet my first wife, Pamela, who was a
wonderful help to me. She knew that I had the illness. She
sought the Lord about whether we should get married, and she
thought it was right. She really wanted me to become free during
the 14 years that we were married, and that actually never
happened. We had a very happy time as husband and wife, and I
preached of course in the local church. I was very active in
church life and in newspaper reporting of Christian events but
the freedom I longed to have did not really occur. Dear Pam
passed away in 1981, and I was left with my children to bring
up; I was also working as well.

Not many schizophrenics can actually turn up for work day in and
day out because some of them, nearly all of them are on
medication, and it kind of makes them passive. So you have to
drive your will to actually turn up for work like I had to do.
But in the course of the years, I found what was really a great
inspiration in prayer. There was a time when I said to God one
day, “I want to really know how I can abide in you. I want to
know Lord how I live in You.” And I was directed to John’s
Gospel, Chapter 15, where the Lord says “If ye abide in Me, and
my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall
be done unto you.”

Also from John Chapter 6, the Lord Jesus says, “The words that I
speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.” So I
thought…Well, if I can but get the word of God inside me, they
will bring the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I began to
meditate on the Word of God; I began to pray the Word of God
into my whole being. And this was a great strength and real
ammunition when these demonic forces would seek to actually
destroy my life. So I was always up early in the morning like
David in Psalms 63 said, “Early will I seek thee.” I believed in
my early days of going to Bible College, and when I came home,
that to meet God in the morning was a real added blessing.

So we were married in 1967; Pam passed away in 1981, and then I
became very, very lonely bringing up my two children. It was a
time that I joined a Christian dating agency called Christian
Friendship Fellowship. I met certain ladies, and there came a
time though after months went by that I thought…Lord, this is
not going anywhere; so I dropped off. Again, I lost all interest
in sports and in life generally. My only pleasure really was to
look through this A4 size list of ladies who gave full details
of who they were and what they wanted. There was nothing in my
heart to really meet someone. One day I came across Tina’s
entry, which simply said what she was interested in; things such
as poetry, traveling, and cooking. But then when I had read
something, which she had put in there to ward off the
undesirables, it really hit me between the eyes; I had never
read before this kind of insertion. She simply said she wanted
to meet someone with a regular prayer life, and I thought…Wow, I
must get to know this lady. So I phoned Tina up and we met.
Three months into the relationship, Tina found out that I was
schizophrenic, because as a Practice Nurse, she used to give the
same injections as I was receiving – modecate and depixol .

Charlotte: Tina, when you met James, were you aware in
the first meeting with him that there was something slightly
awry - or what were you thinking?

Tina: I wouldn’t say it was the first meeting, because we
had a lot to talk about. We went to a lovely scenic spot – the
grounds of Chatsworth House. So we were enjoying our
surroundings, but we were sharing a little bit. He was telling
me about his children and his losing Pam, but as time
progressed, I could sense that there was something, but I just
couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew in his spirit, that part
that worships God, the God conscious part, was beautiful. But I
was beginning to wonder about his emotions and his expression of
how he felt about things, which seemed to be very muted. I still
didn’t know anything until one day I rang up and his daughter,
Alison, answered the phone and said he’d been to the doctor to
get his injection for his nerves. So I thought…hoi, hoi what is
this?

When I asked him what it was, he told me it was depixol which is
one of the antipsychotic drugs, and so everything fell into
place. I thought…ohhh, this is what he suffers from. Even though
he’s a wonderful man, and I knew he had a lovely temperament as
well, but he seemed to be so in bondage in his emotions; lack of
expression and talking about religious or Christian things all
the time - more regularly instead of entering into the natural
side of life, so I knew things were a little bit lopsided.

Charlotte: How did that impact you as a couple starting
out and building up a relationship?

James: Could I just mention, Charlotte, that I actually
prayed and said to the Lord, “I’ll give this dating agency
another go.” I said, “Lord, I am going no further than
Birmingham.” It was three months after going out with Tina that
I had laryngitis and bronchitis. My doctor had given me an extra
injection for my nerves, and I had fallen in love with Tina. So
emotionally, I was somewhat up there. In my bedroom one night, I
had a real vision of Tina in a bridal gown with her father by
her side, and the Lord said to me, “Enough is enough.” That
night I came off my injections; it was a word from the Lord. I
had not in previous years come off my injections just like that;
I thought I would do it when God tells me to. I came off them in
January, 1988, and I haven’t had to return to those injections
since.

But when I got the vision of Tina in the bridal gown, though I
felt not ready for marriage, I thought…Well, if God is going to
give me a vision of a wife, I better hold onto it; so I did.

Charlotte: Tina, did God give you the same vision?

Tina: No, not at all. My initial reaction, I must admit,
was Oh, it’s another delusion. So I didn’t talk about it very
much, and when he brought it up, I’d just say we’ll leave that
aside for the moment. I tried to distract him, really, but as
time progressed, I began to ask questions…Lord, is there a way
out of this? Here is a lovely man who has a beautiful spirit. I
could see his sense of humor too coming through from time to
time. His sort of like suppressed joy of life which was just in
bondage really. So I thought…how can this man stay the same?
There must be an answer Lord; there must be an answer.

It was at that point that I began to just tell trusted friends
all around the country, people I knew who would pray for us, and
I got them just praying. They were not just people who said,
“Yes, I’ll pray on a Friday morning two minutes in my prayer
time praying for us”. They were committed so that I could ring
them up anytime day or night. There was one Vicar friend who I
rang up at 02:00 in the morning at one point when I was
struggling with James over something. They said, “Yes, we’ll
pray right now.” And another cousin, Phil Townend, he and his
wife really went to prayer, and of course my father was the main
stay who was a very, very godly man. He was a pastor, a Vicar,
and he and his wife (my stepmother) would pray regularly every
day, and my auntie too. So there was a small army who stood with
us, and it was actually persevering, committed prayer. Not just
prayer, but actually people just opening their arms to James and
welcoming him as an individual, not saying…oh, he’s a bit queer,
but just recognizing him as a man of God.

Charlotte: How important would you say that intercessory
prayer is praying on behalf of others. Would you say that is a
concept that you have really found key in James’s deliverance
and healing?

Tina: Definitely. Absolutely. Sometimes when we just felt
as though we were hitting a blank wall, then I just phoned
various people and said this is what we are facing at the
moment. Please get them to pray now. Worship the Lord and pray.
Worship and intercessory prayer go together, because worship of
course arms you. In order to lift up, I see prayer for something
like this is like a battering ram that they used to use in the
armies attacking castles to actually push down the wall, or the
portcullis, which is one of these gates you used to have on
castles. You’d see the army going and coming back, over and over
again. It is prayers like that - it will not give up. So
persevering prayer is something that is a key in intercessory
prayer.

Charlotte: And on worship as well, how important do you
see worshipping in this?

(Part 2)

Tina: Prayers like that will not give up, so persevering
prayer is something that is key.

Charlotte: On worship as well, how do you see that
worship is an important key in this?

Tina: Well, absolutely. It is just very important,
because as you worship, your spirit is just being taken up with
the Lord himself, and often oppressions go and even delusions
can lose their hold. Because somebody like James could be
resistant to a certain point that we’re trying to sort of put
over to him, but I said: “let’s go to prayer.” When we went to
prayer and worshipped particularly, you would just see the
scales sometimes nearly physical coming from his eyes. He was
able to say, “Oh, I see that point now.”

For instance, when I first said that I feel the real problem is
schizophrenia, he was very very resistant to the idea. He didn’t
realize why he was having these injections. Some schizophrenics
do, but many do not know. He was in the second category; he did
not know. So therefore, he hadn’t been primed in his mind to
think that he was a schizophrenic. So when I put the point to
him that this was the problem, he resisted it. But as we prayed
and really many people were persevering and said, “How’s it
going?” and they would ring me up. I would say we’re not there
yet, and then the day that he did actually acknowledge that, it
was a breakthrough.

James: If I could say, Charlotte, there are some things
that actually take a volume of prayer for God to do something
with. That was the actual experience of my life, because after
meeting Tina and going to a conference where we heard about
bondages in Christians’ lives, the actual volume of prayer for
me seemed to increase. And I believe too that it aided me in
actually taking God more seriously, and beginning to address
this bondage that was on my life. So the Bible speaks about the
vials being filled with the prayers of the saints, and when
those vials are full, God gives a command to the angels to
actually release the answer to earth. That is the actual result
of people praying! So I am so thankful, not only for the
wonderful faithfulness of God in keeping me over 26 years, but
in so many Christians praying.

I think the very time which was actually deliverance day (was)
on May Day, 1990, when we had been up on the Clent Hills near
where Tina lives. We had gotten back to her home, which is now
our home. I said to her before I went for my train to
Chesterfield, “Shall we pray?”

So we got down to pray and I was just telling the Lord how sick
and tired I was of fighting this foe in my life day by day. Into
that prayer, the Lord just came right in. The only description I
can give to you of that is this. It was the difference between
the aircraft taxiing down the runway, and the pilot doing what
he does to take it airborne. I was somewhere up there with the
Lord, and I was telling Tina at one stage to be quiet because I
was getting through. I said, “Darling, I am getting through! Be
quiet!”

And God said to me as He came down in that moment, “Today you
will be a free man,” and I believed it. I went home to
Chesterfield. I locked my door, and I went into the lounge. And
the Lord said to me, “There is a nest of evil spirits in your
life, and they are located in your knee.” Actually, I had been
unable to walk sometimes because of the excruciating pain that I
felt in my knee. The Lord said, “They are so deep down in your
body, because they are so entrenched and they have been there
for years.”

So I thought, “Well Lord, how do I get them out?” I have got no
experience in casting demons out. My only impression of demons
being cast out is when someone is laying hands on somebody, and
it’s a stubborn spirit and they are wiping the sweat away. So I
said, “Lord, how on earth do I get them out?”

And the word that just flashed across my mind was, “Blast them
out! Blast them out!” So I took a cassette recorder and a tape
of triumphant praise from my Pentecostal church. I played it
into my knee as close as I could and as loud as I could for
twenty minutes. I sat on the settee and the choruses were such
things like “Jesus, at thy name we bow the knee” and “Jesus is
the name we worship.”

At the end of the twenty minutes, I addressed the nest of
spirits and I said, “Now it is time for business.” I spoke
directly to them and said this, “You have been pigs in the
parlor of my life for far too long. You have no legal right to
be there, because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died
for me at Calvary. So in His name, in the power of His blood, in
the authority of the Word of God and in the power of the Holy
Spirit, I now bind you and I loose you!”

I had my sock and shoe off. Immediately I felt three movements;
one, two, and the third – they went through my toes. I felt them
go. My first reaction was…go to the phone and ring Tina and tell
her. As I did so, the Holy Spirit just checked me, and I came
back and sat down. I put my hands on my head in three places,
and simply said, “Lord, believing that you have helped me to
cast those demons out, will you please heal what’s been knotted
up here all this long time?”

You know the Bible talks about God answering while we are yet
speaking to Him. Before I had got the prayer out of my mouth,
something wonderful happened. The Holy Ghost came down in liquid
fire and hit the base of my neck, right over the crown of my
head to the bridge of my nose. Whew…just like that! Just
like a laser beam, and it just smashed open the prison door of
schizophrenia; I was completely healed in my mind. My
countenance was aglow; before, my eyes had been sunken in my
head. My forehead was so protruding; in a moment of time I had
had deliverance and healing. So it was then that I phoned Tina.
I said to her, “Tina darling, God has set me free!”

It is wonderful, and you know for the whole of that week,
because that was a Monday night, I was just longing and itching
to get down to just show her this new man. I phoned her every
night and said to her, “Darling, you will be meeting a new man
when you see me on Saturday.” I was up early on Saturday
morning. I caught the first train to Derby at quarter past six
or so.

I took four photographs in the photo cabin at the station while
I was waiting for the connection, to show the change in my life
and my appearance. Then I finally came to Tina’s doorstep and
rang the bell, and waited for her to come. She appeared and
said, “Wow! You do look different. You do look different,
James.”

I said, “Well, it’s Jesus. He has done it. He has broken the
prison door!”

And just in the same way as a boy of 14, the spiritual doors of
my prison house were wide open when the love of Jesus touched
me, He had done it again. This time He had smashed wide open the
bars of iron and the gates of brass, which were really like a
prison around my mind. So He had actually done that in a
wonderful way.

Charlotte: Wonderful! That is amazing. We’d love to hear
a lot more about that, but right now we would like to give you
the reader, a brief update of what you have been reading. In
this testimony of healing and deliverance from the hell of 26
years of schizophrenia, James Stacey seeks to honor the
unbounded possibilities of prayer and glorifies the ability of
God to answer that every need. After struggling to keep alive,
facing tremendous satanic attack to destroy him, God brought
into his life, Tina, a loving and understanding nurse who prayed
and interceded for God to set him free. They were married in
1991, just 17 months after that great day of freedom.

Welcome back to this amazing story of healing and deliverance.
You were sharing about your testimony before with us, James. So,
17 years ago you were delivered and healed from schizophrenia.
How has the journey been since then? Tina, maybe you’d like to
share a little bit with us about how from the day that James was
healed and delivered things have been.

Tina: Yes, following that we did get engaged and got
married in 1991, which was a wonderful day. Then when we went on
our honeymoon to Malta, it also was a lovely time, but I could
see that there were certain limitations still. If James got
tired, that would often bring up irritability, which was a
pattern of the old self, if you like. So the only way of dealing
with that over the years, and other issues too was through
prayer, but I will just hone in on irritability due to
tiredness.

We used to have to actually gently confront him about it and say
after a particular instant, “Lovey, this is not right.”
Sometimes he would go off in a huff just like the old pattern,
but then after prayer, he would often return and say, “You were
right. Let’s both get down and pray about it.” When we did that,
then we would find that the whole oppression would lift.

Gradually over the years, certain things God has dealt with,
like He does with all our lives with certain wrong attitudes,
but particularly with James’s bondage with schizophrenia
patterns. God released him as he responded to me in a way of
gentle confrontation. But if I lost my cool, which I did at
times to be honest, it didn’t do a thing. It didn’t do anything.
When I really prayed and went to him and said such and such a
thing, God always worked; I can say that. So really, it’s all
down to us being obedient, isn’t it?

Myself and James, as a couple, had to walk in total obedience
and openness to God and each other. So I can honestly say today
our marriage has got better and better. There are new things
that God is going to do. Even two weeks ago, He gave us such joy
in a time of worship that has actually brought even greater
release. So God is always doing new things.

Charlotte: James, in terms after you were a Christian
with schizophrenia, what would you say to people who may be
reading this that may not agree that born again Christian
believers can have evil spirits or demon possession? What would
your response be to that?

James: Well, after being in a prison house for 26 years,
I can just simply say, as I mentioned earlier when Jesus does
bring you to himself, He does free us from sin and the penalty
of sin, but there can be things left in our lives even of a
demonic nature. If we are to be quite honest about this, there
is a lot of what might be termed “baggage” in the lives of
Christians who are mature Christians, who have been up for
prayer in an earnest and loving way to the front year after
year, and they have not become free. These are people who have
bondages still in their lives, which I do believe in many cases
could be demonically induced.

So, we have to really wake up and just see how things really
are. This was a demonic bondage, and there is nothing else that
could have got rid of if for me, except the power of the blood
of Jesus Christ. Sad to say, the church has been really living
with blinkers on, not willing to kind of see things as God sees
them. The whole difference comes to us when we allow the Holy
Spirit to reveal things to us as they really are. The word of
God as we know says when He the Spirit of truth has come, He
will guide us into all truth. It is only followers of Jesus
Christ who have the revelation of what schizophrenia is all
about, and I do believe many other bondages people are carrying
who call themselves followers of the Lord.

Charlotte: As the church, if we have members of our
congregation that are suffering with schizophrenia, how would
you address pastors and congregation members to deal with this?

James: What I would say first of all, they need to look
at these people with the heart of Jesus, a heart of compassion.
They first of all have to get to know them, and show an interest
in them. But the conviction has to be kind of in the heart that
God not only loves them, but He has provided the means whereby
these people can be free. And schizophrenics are not generally
free because no one is taking the time to love them, and to go
get their hands dirty, pray, and bring these people into
worship, and just receive them for who they are.

We were ministering to one man in our home, because we began at
one stage before my wife Tina was poorly ill;we began to have
some in our home to pray with them. It occurred to me this day
that I didn’t really know this man who was in my home. He was
coming for prayer, and that was good, but I was really
ministering to him just on that footing. I didn’t get to know
anything about him. So I invited him to come another day and he
helped me to paint the fence, and we had a great time together.
I was being shown by the Lord that I needed to love this kind of
person, to show I had an interest in him, and that I was not
just interested in him to minister to him. So we need to find
the compassion of Jesus, which is the key to everything isn’t
it?

Charlotte: Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about
PUSH?

James: PUSH stands for “Pray Until Schizophrenia Heals”
and this is something which we got going because it’s really a
ministry of hope. There is one out of every 100 people
throughout the entire world despite wherever they are in the
nations of the world who have schizophrenia. We just wanted to
sound out with a trumpet voice that Jesus is the only One who
can thoroughly set free and restore a person who has this
bondage.

Charlotte: Which is also wonderful. Yes, I was having a good
read of that; it’s a great book. So we can actually order that
online too?

James: Yes, there is a facility to do that, and we are pleased
to say that there is a missionary in Columbia who is translating
it into Spanish, and we also have a lady in Germany who is going
to do it into German as well. This is a message which we feel is
simply to give hope. That’s all we’re doing. Jesus Christ is the
only hope for many many things, and we felt that the church has
not really got underneath the actual problem of mental illness,
the whole business of mental illness, including schizophrenia.
Jesus has the answer. He has the answer through Himself, through
the Word of God, through prayer, and through ministry of the
Holy Spirit. He has the answer to everything.

Now in one breath we say He has the answer; the church would
declare that. But really, we are not getting our hands dirty and
helping the likes of such people like this. We say it with our
mouths, but in our hearts we don’t believe it. So my hope is
that eventually there will be a home, no more than one home,
even for schizophrenics with a Christian psychiatrist, with a
Christian staff of nurses and helpers who will not be
overworked, but there will be many people to share in looking
after schizophrenic people who come in who will have their own
community in that home. They will be loved for who they are, and
they will be taken into atmospheres of worship. That is
something beautiful when you take people into an atmosphere of
worship where Jesus is allowed to connect with the spirit. And
when that is happening, the bondages in the mind often fall off
and the deliverance of schizophrenia can be rapidly done, I do
believe through active faith in Jesus.

Charlotte: Great. Well as you say, your book “Schizophrenia
Defeated” is an amazing read, and if you’d like to order this
book, you can do so through their website,
www.schizophreniadefeated.com.

If you have one final thing to say; someone who is reading this
now and needs a final word of hope or that needs a word of
encouragement, what would you say to somebody who maybe is still
in the battle of schizophrenia, what would you say to them?

James: Well, there is a real difference between a person who has
schizophrenia who is a Christian, and a person who has it who is
a non-Christian. The person who is a Christian has the Holy
Spirit, and he or she therefore has the help of the Lord’s
presence to help them through and also to respond to ministry.

But someone who is really not a born again Christian who does
not know Jesus, the very first step for them is to come to know
Him, because this is indeed a demonic presence which is very
very powerful, and it can only be addressed when someone is
living in the light and truth of the Word of God, and who knows
Jesus intimately and can get people around him or her to pray.
There can be a prayer wall as it were helping that person into
freedom, but I would just stress as well that until the Lord
tells you not to, keep on with your medication. Medication can
make you very passive, and sad to say, medication can lead a
person into a place where they can become an even easier prey
for the enemy to come in to make plans to destroy that life.
Medication is very, very necessary for many people.

And indeed they need to know that they need to be stabilized,
but I do believe that Jesus Christ is the only hope. It is very
difficult to hang on in there, and it is very difficult to be
disciplined and seek God, but I do believe that the freedom that
you will enjoy once you pray through, once you travail, once you
make it known that you mean business that God will come in and
do this work, you will enter into a freedom that you have never
before even envisaged. The Lord will bless you and life will
become just as He intended it to be for you.
Charlotte: Wonderful. Maybe Tina, as somebody that has been
lovingly supporting a partner, what would you say to people out
there as a word of encouragement that maybe are in a similar
situation that you’ve been in?

Tina: Well, I would say that there is hope in Jesus Christ and
in the power of Jesus being applied to the individual. Also, not
to give up, but persevere. There is a lot that is in the Bible
that says keep on praying. As James said, sometimes you feel
your prayers are not being answered. I would just encourage you
that they will be answered. Just keep on praying, and get as
many people as possible to pray for you and to be open and
honest regarding the various stages that you’re going through so
that they can pray intelligently and powerfully for you. And
eventually, God will answer just as He did when He said to the
angel with all the incense, which were the prayers of the
saints, “throw it out now on the earth,” which means God answers
prayer. So eventually your bowls will be made up of lots of
different prayers, and eventually God will say: “Enough is
enough; this is the time.” But remember, there is a time when it
is right for God to act. So don’t give up, but keep persevering
because we’ve got a wonderful God.

Charlotte:
Thanks for being with us James and Tina. It’s been a real
privilege to talk to you both. (“Our pleasure”, said James) If
anything has affected you during this program, if your heart is
being really spoken to and you need someone to talk to and you’d
like prayer, please feel free to email James and Tina at jamestinastacey@btinternet.com, to talk to them. We would be
really happy to pray with you, and we send you every blessing.

Also, if you would like to read James Stacey’s book,
Schizophrenia Defeated, you can order it online here.

We can be contacted at
this website as well. A Weekly Encourager appears on the
homepage each weekend to give hope to Christian schizophrenics and others in
respect of securing total freedom in Jesus Christ.

If you would like to hear this
powerful interview on video, you can click on the following link:

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